


Temperence

by newsbypostcard



Series: Due Process [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the destruction of the Normandy, Staff Lieutenant Alenko tries to negotiate a new normal; tries his damndest to locate stability. But emotional temperance? Hard to find.

</p>
<p><em>He does not waver; he gives the answers expected of him in the same level monotone; and after some indeterminate amount of time the communication collapses. He stares at the same spot on the wall for some time, feet astride, hands clasped behind his back, and it stares back at him as the bland wall it is, unyielding as ever, telling him nothing at all.</em>

</p>
<p>
  <em>The first punch takes him by surprise.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temperence

**Author's Note:**

> I made some choices here with regard to Kaidan's methods of coping with Shepard's loss that may make some uncomfortable. He bruises his own knuckles for the sake of a site of pain to focus on; he also drinks frequently. As a wee emotional laddie I think he'd have a hard time staying self-contained, but please feel free to skip over whatever sections as needed, or of course feel free to hit the back button.
> 
> As Shepard does not appear in this fic for obvious reasons, the S/K is tenuous, but the dialogue implies an ME1 romance.
> 
> EDIT Feb 2016: This is an optional prequel to the Due Process series.

_ 2183 _

It’s not like last time. This time, he doesn’t turn back.

The shuttle is programmed to land on the nearest surface clear of enemies. Kaidan thinks it’s Alchera that’s the nearest. He doesn’t like those odds. He’s not certain they’ll make it for long once they land, or even if they’ll make it that far; there’s no reason the ship won’t come after _them_ next.

“Anyone seriously injured?” he asks of the two Ensigns seated in front of him, and gets silent headshakes in return. “All right. Once we land I want you to ready weapons and follow me out of the shuttle. We’ll try to rendezvous with the other shuttles and go from there, but we should try to keep cover just in case.”

“Just in case, sir?”

“We don’t know why that ship attacked us, Ensign,” Kaidan tells him gravely. “We have to consider the possibility it’s following us right now.”

“The panel -- there’s nothing on the radar.”

Something jolts in Kaidan’s stomach, and he grips at the armrest to quell it down. Was the ship after Shepard, or just out to destroy the Normandy? “Can’t eliminate--”

An explosion rocks the shuttle.

Kaidan’s face snaps to his left, gaze focused on the back wall of the shuttle as though it’s somehow opened to provide a window to whatever is happening; but instead it stares back at him as the bland wall it is, unyielding as ever, telling him nothing as a second explosion rocks at them harder, louder.

He shuts his eyes, swallows, flexes his fingers, and turns again to face them.

“Can’t eliminate any possibility,” he says again, lower; and he braces himself against the seat as the shuttle begins its descent.

  


  


In the end, it takes Alliance reinforcements three hours to show up.

All told, it had taken Kaidan twenty minutes to unify 29 survivors, including himself, landed across several points on the planet’s surface. Three have damaged armour, and several more are injured, but none seem to be in grave peril; so Kaidan leaves it to Chakwas to patch them up with the shuttles’ rudimentary medical supplies and goes to organize the rest, keeping one eye on the sky all along.

He gathers all those who are able to group around the de facto medlab in five-person clusters and orders them to hold weapons pointed at the sky. Then they do what Kaidan hates more than anything: wait.

With every glimmer in the sky, Kaidan both hopes to god it’s Shepard’s shuttle and knows, somehow, that it isn’t.

But neither is the ship coming after them, either.

He’s bitter with Alliance troops when they finally do show up, holding his weapon tighter as they enter the atmosphere as though to shoot at them just because they’re not Shepard; but he knows, too, that the Normandy was in the middle of the Omega cluster, and the Alliance, well, wasn’t. There was nothing they could have done.

There was nothing _any_ of them could have done.

The thought sticks in his mind, and Kaidan feels ill.

The Normandy is destroyed, they tell him. No sign of the ship that did it; the wreckage looked like nothing they’d seen. No, they hadn’t seen any indication of Shepard’s whereabouts. No lifesigns left aboard the Normandy.

Kaidan has already started walking away, trying to shake the leaden feeling from settling into his legs, trying to raise something from deep within himself to keep it together for long enough to finish the job -- and it’s then that the lieutenant tells him that there’s one other lifesign on the planet.

He spins around as soon as she says it, actively restrains himself from taking the other Marine by the shoulders and shaking the information out of her. “Where?” he asks, as calmly as he can manage, fingers gripping over his gun instead; and she blinks, raises her eyebrows as though in reprimand, takes too long to reply.

“Not too far,” she begins, “but too far to reasonably get on foot if we want to get back to Citadel space today. We sent a shuttle. It should be back within the hour.”

He stares at her, clenching his jaw. He wants to ask her more, to get all the information he can; but there are still troops with slow leaks in their armour, injuries he can heal, and he knows where Shepard would order him to be.

His gaze drifts off to the left. “Okay. Will you keep me posted?”

He outranks her, but it’s not a command. Her face softens, and she agrees; and then it’s fifty long minutes of patching people’s armour before the shuttle comes in.

Kaidan manages to distract himself, for a while. He heals who he can; he takes statements from the crew. But something grows in him, a certainty that he doesn’t like but that he’s felt before: he knows, somehow, that Shepard didn’t make it.

He was also wrong before. But that doesn’t make this situation the same.

The shuttle comes in and Kaidan takes his leave abruptly from Private Fredericks, breaking away with a half-hearted pat on his shoulder and half-jogging toward the shuttle in alternating bursts with walking. 

He’s unsure of what to feel. 

His heart is pounding and he’s all too aware of his own breathing and the fact of his palms sweating in his gloves, and he’s even more aware of the hope blossoming within him, somehow. Could it really be Shepard? Did she get to the shuttle before the Normandy blew? The singular life sign didn’t make sense; did Joker die on the ship, or maybe along the way? 

It’s all so entirely possible; she’s a fucking survivor if she’s anything at all, and shit, _Christ_ , what if she _actually--_

The figure that staggers out of the shuttle is wearing an old style of Alliance armour -- male.

Kaidan’s feet drag to a stop beneath him. There are seconds that seem not to pass, the breath stuck in his chest as though impossible to let out; and the ground seems to fall out from under him, his arms dead at his sides.

“She didn’t make it,” Kaidan says, more to himself than anyone else; but Joker takes in a breath that sounds more like a sob as he staggers toward him, and time starts passing again.

“Kaidan.” Joker’s hand on his shoulder, his voice inscrutable. “Fuck, man, I’m so sorry. There was an explosion, I was already too far -- she got spaced.” Joker grips at Kaidan, as though desperate to make him understand. “I could only watch, man, she ejected me and was gone. I’m so fucking sorry.”

All Kaidan knows is white noise.

“She knew the risks,” he manages to mutter, placing his own hand on Joker’s shoulder, briefly, in part to keep himself up; then he straightens out, squeezes at Joker’s armour, and strides slowly, evenly, weightily toward the shuttle. “Any more need to be healed?”

It’s hard to walk as sorrow fills up his limbs and makes them heavy; but a few hours later, when he’s debriefing the Council from the Alliance ship, his voice sounds normal again, even to him.

“And Commander Shepard?” asks Anderson at last, as though the question hasn’t been burning in his mind for twenty minutes as to why Kaidan was doing the debriefing.

“Joker Moreau, our pilot, last saw her drifting in space after she saved his life,” Kaidan says evenly. White heat wraps its way around his ribs, but his tone stays steady. “Scans were negative for life forms in and around the Normandy, as well as on Alchera.” He shifts his weight uneasily, settles back to the same place he began. “Unless the universe is feeling particularly forthcoming with miracles these days, it is my recommendation is that we classify her among the dead.”

Anderson is looking at Kaidan, and Kaidan is looking at the wall of the ship behind the feed, feet astride and hands clasped behind his back in perfect discipline.

“The Council is sorry to hear of this loss,” says Udina, sounding not very sorry; and Kaidan swallows the bile down.

“Not sorrier than I am to report it,” he replies. He does not say ‘sir’. He does not waver.

He does not waver, either, when he receives praise for his actions; when plans are made to honour the dead, though there’s nothing mentioned about Shepard in specific. He does not waver as the Council advises him that he is in charge of the remaining crew, and that they are to report to the Citadel at the earliest possible convenience for psychiatric evaluation and new orders.

He does not waver; he gives the answers expected of him in the same level monotone; and after some indeterminate amount of time the communication collapses. He stares at the same spot on the wall for some time, feet astride, hands clasped behind his back, and it stares back at him as the bland wall it is, unyielding as ever, telling him nothing at all. 

It’s altogether too much like the wall on the shuttle that failed to turn into a window, and his calm is slipping away.

The first punch takes him by surprise.

The pain shoots through the bones in his hand in heated tendrils and it’s the first real thing he’s felt in hours. Something breaks in his chest and the wall doesn’t dent, the room is empty, the scream is welling, so he punches the wall again where the Council’s broadcast used to be, feels his knuckles crack upon impact.

By the time someone comes to investigate the scream that wrenched itself from his lungs, Kaidan’s already turning to leave, knuckles bloodied, demeanor steady. 

“Might’ve damaged the station,” he mutters evenly as he pushes past the lieutenant who’d come running in. It crackles behind him, still electric with the biotic energy he hadn’t intended to release; and he knows perfectly well the entire unit will need to be replaced.

He does not feel less angry, but he does feel better having a locus of pain to focus on.

He flexes the fingers on his right hand often in the coming days.

  


  


It’s Thursday and he’s been “given the weekend to recharge,” which is flagrantly transparent code for “we haven’t figured out if we’re pressing charges for damages to the console,” so he goes to a club to pass the time, figuring a few dozen drinks will help to dull his inability to sit still.

“Haven’t seen you here before,” the asari bartender placates as she pours him a whiskey.

“Not my usual scene,” he tells her. “Prefer the quiet life.”

“Face like yours? I doubt it.”

He frowns at her and winces as the whiskey tracks down his throat. “What, defeated?”

“Singed. Your whole right cheek is burned, you know that, right?” She smiles as he blinks up at her, and she pours him another. “But, sure. Troubled. Tired. Handsome, too.”

“Spare me.” He waves a hand.

“Just telling it like it is. You want me to open a tab?”

“Ab-so-lutely,” he agrees; and he doesn’t speak again until he’s seven drinks in.

It’s an hour later when she shoots him a look that isn’t judgmental but that seems close enough after he points at his glass, and he bristles. “Is it helping?” she asks as she approaches, bottle in hand but withheld under the bar.

“Does it matter?” he grunts. His voice sounds strange again, and he preferred the silence, even as it had drummed relentlessly in his head.

“To you it does.”

“I don’t care about me.”

She hums. “You should, you know.”

He kicks his foot idly under the bar, and it connects with the steel, surprising him. “It doesn’t matter.” He kicks again for good measure, then stares despondently into his glass. “I failed her. That’s it.”

The asari cocks her head. “How did you fail her?”

He looks up suddenly, tries to focus his eyes, but then slumps in his stool. “Another,” he says only.

She hesitates, then pours him one more. “That’s it, though. You’re going home after this.”

_Home._

If he thinks of Shepard’s quarters on the Normandy, it’s only for a moment.

Security throws him out ten minutes later for brawling.

  


  


Psychology is a hack pseudo-science and he’s hated it for more years than he can remember.

“You and Shepard had a personal relationship?” asks the so-called _counselor_ he’s been made to see prior to returning to duty. This appointment is the only thing between him and an assignment on Monday, and he knows he needs something to do in an ASAP sort of way, so part of him is determined not to fuck it up.

But he hates this shit. So it’s not a _small_ obstacle.

He shuts his eyes and tries to stuff his anger back into its box. It’s made immeasurably worse by the hangover, and he wished he’d had the foresight to at least fuel his bender with a meal. “Operative word: _personal_ ,” he gravels.

Dr. L’Shara nods, too patiently. “Other Normandy crew members have indicated that you and Shepard had a close personal … _physical_ relationship.”

“I don’t recall inviting witnesses along when pursuing my personal life, so I don’t imagine they have any proof to show.” He smacks his lips. He thinks he might’ve been arrogant for about five minutes in his youth, and if not, then there’s a first time for everything.

“Are you bitter toward your crewmates?”

“No.” Just Joker. “Not at all.”

“I have other reports about your personal relationship with Commander Shepard as well. It might be worth talking about.”

Kaidan laughs hollowly. “Are you actually going to use the alleged report of a high-ranking diplomat of the Systems Alliance Council against me to try to get me to talk? Do you have any purported ethics at all?”

“I’m not against you, Kaidan.”

“Lieutenant Alenko,” he corrects.

She blinks at him repeatedly, looks at him in the bullshit-calling way it seems every woman he comes across lately seems to want to do; and he stands abruptly, tendrils of fire lapping at his lungs. “We’re finished here,” he says, before she can reply.

“Not if you want to return to duty we’re not,” she counters immediately, firm.

He’s already turned, walking toward the door. “Fuck you.”

“Lieutenant Alenko.”

The professionalism is easy to respond to, and brings him down, somehow -- enough to make him stop in his tracks, anyway. “What.”

“What happened to your hand?”

Two layers of bruises now grace his knuckles, each layer a different colour. He’d never bothered to heal the lacerations that the steel of the ship wall in combination with his accidentally-engaged biotics had given him, and they look back at him now, reopened against skin the night before. They’re physical evidence of an event that happened in open space that he has no evidence for, can’t bear to think about, and doesn’t know how to process. _What happened?_ Fuck if he knew. For that matter, fuck everything else while he was at it.

But as L’Shara stared at him, waited to see if he was going to answer or walk out, it all made sense in some way it hadn’t before. He hadn’t been dinged economically or legally for damaging Alliance property, despite that charges should’ve been laid right away given that there was no confusing him for anyone else. Furthermore, despite that he was a Marine and a registered Systems Alliance squad member and was therefore expected not to use undue force against a civilian, he miraculously hadn’t faced charges at the bar, either. The thing that was making sense was Anderson, obviously telling L’Shara that he’d had a relationship with Shepard, recommending him here in the first place; and he realized Anderson had probably stepped in and made a case for him here, same as he always did, the same way he always had for--

He flexes his fingers in front of him, taking the pain it gave him and putting it toward turning back around.

“I got angry,” he says quietly, watching the bones of his hand move as he bends each of his fingers.

“Why?”

“Because of the casualties on the Normandy.”

“Why?” she asks again; he bristles.

“I don’t understand the question,” he says stubbornly.

L’Shara shifts in her seat. “Are you usually angry to the point of violence when you lose a teammate?”

“I didn’t lose _a teammate._ I -- _We_ lost two dozen.”

“Who’s we?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

She seems to suppress a smile as she looks up at him. “Are you still angry?”

He _is_ still angry, but the feeling is different, suddenly, ebbing away to make room for something else. “Isn’t that obvious?” Making room for -- petulance. That’s useful.

“Would you like to sit down?” she inquires after a still silence, voice quiet and annoyingly calm.

“No.” He shuts his eyes again while the headache pounds at his temple.

L’Shara’s set her pen neatly down across the page when he opens his eyes again. “Why are you angry?” she asks again, leaning in.

“Because what happened doesn’t make any sense to me.”

She nods, slowly, thoughtfully. “Does death ever make sense?”

“No.” He pauses. “But the shock increases with the death toll.”

“You don’t seem shocked to me.”

“I -- I’m not. Look.” He moves to sit down, and she repositions to let him pass. “What _happened_ \-- doesn’t make sense. We don’t know what that ship was. We don’t know where it came from or why they were out to destroy us. For all we know, we just happened to be occupying the same space at the same time. But that -- that makes this _pointless_. That means that I lost Shepard for no r--”

He stops abruptly, and the counselor smiles, eyes kind. “No one’s looking to penalize you for having a relationship with your superior officer.”

“My job isn’t to prioritize Shepard over the team.”

“Nor did you.”

Waves of grief and something else crash over him, and he leans back into the chair, tries to reposition the tension as it rolls through his body. “It wasn’t my job to get her out.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“But I could have taken her place.” He closes his hand into a fist; a scab breaks open on his knuckle. “It’s my fault she’s dead.”

L’Shara blinks at him and leans back in her chair, and he can almost hear her thinking, _now we’re getting somewhere._

  


  


The Citadel feels weird at night; or maybe it just feels weird because he’s on his own. 

He decided to take a walk an hour ago, when sitting still got old again, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and thinks about how much he’d rather be drunk. He thinks about how much he’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything at all; he thinks about how much he’d rather Shepard was here. 

But she isn’t here. She isn’t gonna get here.

The cold of the rain splatters over his skin, and the sensation of it clenches at his heart.

He hates it here, suddenly. Time was that he loved the Citadel; it was a better home than Jump Zero had been, anyway, and even Earth felt stranger to him than this place after enough time with the Alliance. But now it was wrong, in a way totally apart from the rebuilding efforts after the battle. It feels empty; it seems to echo. And suddenly he wishes he was back in his quarters after all.

He keeps walking instead, gets lost in his head, hears only his own footsteps and the chatter of the people around him, indoors and covered from the rain. He hitches a hood over his head and considers ducking into a bar, instead; but the forlorn Citadel has grown on him as appropriate, suddenly, as though it was built just for him, same as it always had. He realizes distantly that this is still his home, after all -- that it will always mold to match him, regardless of what he wanted it to be instead.

At the same moment, something moves behind him, and his heart _jumps_. 

He spins in place, his boot grating harshly, and his blood pressure rises too quickly. He knows what he expects to see before the turn even stops, knows somehow too that it’s impossible -- but even so it’s still a shock to find:

Shepard isn’t there.

His stomach drops, and his hand grasps at the air for want of something to hold onto. The sensation sends his heart rate tripling in a matter of seconds, and the headache that had been tugging at him all day is suddenly full-force, blocking his vision. 

He stands by himself in the rain, in perfect silence except for his own panting breaths, his hands splayed out to either side of him in the air as though he’d been caught battle-ready without a weapon, his hood spun off of him with the abrupt turn and the rain splattering over him. The despair creeps over him as he realizes that she _can’t_ be there, that she’ll _never be there again_. His breath comes harder as a ball forms in his throat as though to prevent him from breathing; but just as suddenly, the process is suddenly interrupted by a wild, swooping moment of overwhelming realization:

He is suddenly _absolutely convinced_ that Shepard could be _anywhere else_.

In minutes he finds himself standing in front of Anderson’s quarters, staring at the door and panting with the effort of his sprint; and after a second to attempt in vain to catch his breath, he’s pounding at it, desperate for someone to understand that she might still be alive, making as much noise as he can manage, trying to raise _someone_ for this cause.

Anderson answers the door in fucking clichéd pyjamas, white with blue stripes, looking disheveled and tired and frankly annoyed to see who’s at the door. “What in god’s almighty name, Lieutenant?”

“You have to commission a fleet,” he says hurriedly, tripping over his words in his haste. “You have to commission it now, I don’t care who’s in it, I’ll fucking run the entire thing myself if you give me a ship.”

“Alenko.”

“Captain Anderson--”

“Councillor now.”

“--they never found her.”

“ _Alenko._ ”

“Right? There’s still a chance she’s alive.”

“Alenko--”

“She could be drifting in space without sustenance, it’s been _three days_ , sir, she could be _absolutely anywhere_ , we have to go _now_ \--”

“Kaidan!” Anderson shouts; and Kaidan shudders a breath, packs away his last words, and tries to keep himself steady as shakes wrack through his body.

“Sir,” he says shortly, trying to stand erect and in place.

Anderson blinks at him, wasting time. “Come inside, Alenko.”

“No, sir,” he replies, still shortly. “No time.”

“I’m not commissioning you a boat.”

“Sir--”

“You’re not cleared for active duty--”

“Do I look as though I give a shit about that, sir?”

Anderson’s lip quirks. “You’re soaking wet. Come in and have a cup of coffee.”

He clenches his teeth to keep them from chattering. “No, sir.”

“What are you going to do, commandeer a boat?”

“If I have to, sir.”

“Stop with the sir, will you? Just get inside.”

“No, sir.”

“Kaidan--”

“Councillor!” he barks, and Anderson sighs. “We haven’t got time!”

“She’s dead, Alenko.”

The words resonate in his ears, initially not making sense, rattling around in his head until they do; and he shuts his eyes against the claim, unwilling to accept it. “We don’t know that, sir.”

“You were the one who recommended we make that call.”

“I was wrong.”

“No, Alenko. I don’t think you were.”

“I might’ve been.”

Anderson rolls his eyes and suddenly yanks him by the arm, pulls him abruptly inside, with Kaidan stumbling in somehow despite his attempt at unwavering discipline. “Sit the hell down, Alenko.” 

The door slams behind him. “Sir--”

“It’s three in the morning and you’re banging on my door in the pouring rain. You’re asking me for a ship I can’t issue you and I’m answering the door in my goddamned pyjamas. You better start calling me David or we’re going to have a problem.” He pulls a chair out abruptly from behind a desk and moves to the coffee maker. “Now sit _down_.”

People seem to _love_ to tell him where to be lately; but after a fleeting desire to considerably insubordinate his post by way of physical force to _make_ Anderson understand his meaning, Kaidan sits the hell down.

“What are you doing out at this hour, Alenko?” Anderson asks him at last, sitting exhaustedly on the bed.

“Taking a walk.”

“What time did you start your walk?”

He thinks back. “Around 2200, sir.”

“It’s 0300 now.”

The condescension grates at Kaidan, and he shuts his eyes against the overwhelming wave of anger crashing in his chest. “You mentioned that.”

“Call me David.”

“Whatever, sir.”

Incredulously, Anderson smirks. Kaidan could swear he was a walking joke lately, except for the sucking chest wound he couldn’t stop feeling and wishes other people could see.

“You’re having trouble,” Anderson remarks, too matter-of-factedly.

Kaidan clenches his teeth, his final shred of controlled dignity slipping away from him. “You don’t fucking say, sir.”

“How’s it going with Dr. L’Shara?”

“She’s full of shit, sir.”

“You can’t just tack on ‘sir’ to the end of every statement to avoid insubordination charges, Alenko.”

“I can try, sir.”

Anderson seems to take a moment to contain his smile. “Did you do this with Shepard when you were angry with her, too?”

He opens his mouth, but it shutters closed before he has a chance to give any voice to his thoughts.

Anderson watches him in silence for a second, then gets up to pour them both a coffee. “You’re not the only one who misses her, you know,” he says, placing the cup on the table beside him.

Kaidan bristles again; electricity courses briefly through his arm, and his migraine pounds at him. “Well you know that’s probably the least fucking useful thing you could say to me right now, _David_ , so how about we just say to hell with this and I just do what needs to be done without my trying to go through the proper channels--”

“I’m a Councillor now, Kaidan,” Anderson says quietly, seated on the bed with one ankle hitched over his knee, watching Kaidan steadily as he rises from the chair. “I might represent the Alliance, but I have no control over fleets, and you knew that before you came here.”

Kaidan blinks, and the floor is falling out from under him again. He collapses back into the chair, leans his elbows on his knees, tries to breathe. “Actually I forgot about that.” He looks up at Anderson through his eyelashes. “Too used to coming to you for help.”

“Maybe so,” Anderson tells him, “but maybe you were just looking for a friendly face.” He peers at Kaidan closer. “Not a lot of people you trust around these parts.”

“I guess not.”

“Consider going home to Earth for a while?”

“Is that an order?”

“I’m not your commanding officer,” Anderson placates.

Kaidan blinks at him, then suddenly throws his hands up in the air. “I don’t even know who my commanding officer _is_!” he shouts.

“That’s causing you problems.”

“I’m -- yeah! Tell me where to go! Tell me how to beat this!”

“Beat what?”

Kaidan stares. “The -- Reapers.”

“Ah.”

Kaidan ignores his knowing eyebrows. “Do we know anything about the ship that attacked the Normandy?”

Anderson stares at him a second, and Kaidan knows he’s not supposed to be privy to this info; but Anderson shifts after a moment and seems to settle an argument with himself. “No,” he says, honestly. “We know almost nothing, Alenko. We dispatched another ship out there after you returned--”

“What!”

“--trying to ascertain what happened.”

“Without me?!”

Anderson ignores him. “The traces left by the weaponry is continuing to stump us. None of the Council races have seen anything like it before.”

“Did you find her?”

Anderson blinks, too slowly. “There was still no trace of Shepard. No life signs, and no body.”

“Wh -- no … what?”

“I don’t need to tell you about propulsion in space and gravitational pulls. She could be anywhere. She could be on Alchera. She could be orbiting Alchera. She might be on one of the moons. She might’ve gotten pulled into Anjea’s orbit. She’s far too small to catch on our radar by herself; we’ll never find her unless we know where to look.”

Kaidan’s never heard Shepard described as _small_ before, and it chafes. It sounds wrong and it _is_ wrong and Shepard has never been small for a moment in her life.

“Well let’s figure it out,” he grits out.

“We don’t have the resources for that and you know it,” Anderson replies.

The thickness in his throat is returning, and this time he’s not sure he’s going to think his way out of it. “Sir--”

“Alenko,” Anderson interrupts, “son, it is three in the god damn morning, and some of us have jobs to do tomorrow. I am not willing to have this discussion with you any longer.” He drags a blanket off the foot of his bed and throws it at Kaidan. “But you look like you’ve either already been hit by a truck or like you might make it so if you leave here right now, so I’m going to issue you an order you don’t need to follow given that I am, as we’ve established, not your commanding officer: Go the hell to sleep.” He sets his mug down and gets up. “Or not. There’s a whole pot of coffee on. Stay awake if it makes you feel better to run through the millions of scenarios we’ll never get to run to try to find her, no matter how much we want to.” Anderson’s hand finds his shoulder. “But each day that passes is a day closer to easier.”

“Each day that passes--”

“We have already lost this battle, Kaidan.” It’s the waver in Anderson’s voice that gets him, and Kaidan finally bows his head and lets the sob wrack his shoulders as Anderson pulls the blanket around them. “It’s done, Lieutenant. It’s time to pack it in.”

But unless Kaidan is mistaken, based solely on what he could ascertain from his own state of wide-eyed insomnia on the couch against the opposite wall from the bed -- Anderson doesn’t get any more sleep that night after all.

  


  


He gives up on walks after that, and tries again with the club. There is, at least, booze there.

The bartender is nice, and equally easy to talk to and not talk to, and he tips her exorbitantly, no longer seeing the need to save up for whatever he and -- whatever he might’ve done during his next leave. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the amount that he drinks, contenting himself with two on one night and going for a dozen the next; and by the middle of the week he’s already got Tal’a pouring him a drink before he even sits down.

He’s only a couple in and pointedly staring at the same spot on the wall behind the bar when he suddenly recognizes the voice beside him as it places an order. He places it instantly, but refuses to turn; instead, he straightens up and faces forward with his shoulders squared, as though trying to impress a commanding officer.

“I heard you quit,” Kaidan says eventually, still facing forward.

“I did,” Garrus’ voice gravels back. “Can’t stand the official line on the Normandy. Can’t wait to get out of this fucking place. But I wasn’t gonna miss the memorial.”

Kaidan thinks for a moment, trying drunkenly to grasp on whatever the fuck Garrus is referring to; then he remembers that it’s Wednesday, which means the next day is Thursday, and that the Normandy’s mass memorial service is scheduled for the next day.

He slumps back down onto the bar, all sense of decorum thrown aside. “Shit.”

He feels Garrus’ gaze boring into the side of his neck. “Had you really forgotten?”

“It’s been a long week and I don’t need you fucking judging me, okay?”

Garrus’ mandibles click open, then shut again. Blessedly, he turns back to his drink and gives Kaidan another thirty whole minutes of silence, punctuated only by Tal’a refilling their glasses and referring to the fact that they “look quite a pair,” to their mutual disdain. 

Eventually the reason for Garrus’ approach becomes clear when he mutters the words, barely sends them in Kaidan’s direction at all. 

Kaidan blinks instead of replying and initially wonders if he can pretend not to’ve heard over the music in the distance; but ultimately the tone gets to him, weighs heavily against him, the quiet desperation of “What really happened, Alenko?” tugging at some heartstring he apparently could still feel through the unfeeling frost of grief.

“I have no idea, Garrus,” he sighs eventually, bringing his drink up to his lips.

“What happened to _Shepard._ ”

“She got spaced.”

“I got the official version already, don’t give me that shit.”

“Talk to Joker, man, I wasn’t there.”

“And why was _that_ , exactly?”

The question is a gash over his chest, and he braces against it even as Garrus sighs and seems to hasten to correct himself. “I don’t mean it,” he barks, then adds, “you’re not responsible for this”; but it doesn’t sound totally convincing to Kaidan’s ears.

“Don’t think I don’t wish I could’ve saved her,” Kaidan says into the bar in a low voice.

“I know,” Garrus says begrudgingly.

“Don’t think I don’t blame myself.”

“I --” He sighs. “I’m -- ugh. I don’t know what I meant, but it wasn’t that.”

“So what exactly are you trying to ask here, Garrus? Because that’s all I know. She got spaced. We can’t find her. We can’t find her life signs, and we can’t find her -- dead signs, either. She could be anywhere. We don’t know where she is and we’re not gonna find her.”

Garrus tenses visibly and leans harder against the bar. “Tell me about the ship that attacked her.”

“You mean us?”

Garrus hesitates. “Yeah. I guess, yeah. Sorry.”

Kaidan clenches his jaw and looks down at his feet a moment before bringing his drink up again, finding it easier to speak into than the bar at large and definitely easier than speaking to Garrus directly. “We don’t know much about that either. We thought it was the geth at first, but their weapons were too strong.”

“Reapers?”

“I -- maybe. But I don’t think so. Hard to tell. It was unlike anything we’ve -- the Normandy or the Alliance -- has seen before.”

Garrus snorts, and Kaidan turns his head to look directly at him for the first time. “You’re not convinced?”

“No offense to you and yours, Alenko, but not for a goddamned second.”

Kaidan’s heart skips a beat for reasons he’s not clear on, and he blinks heavily. “Could you elabourate on that?”

Garrus looks at him, too, appearing exhausted and gaunt, and seems to realize from Kaidan’s expression that he isn’t looking to argue as much as trying to understand. “You notice anything fishy about the Alliance’s official reports and press releases after the Battle at the Citadel?”

“Only in the sense that they were total bullshit,” Kaidan replies.

“Right. Blah blah, threat has been eliminated, blah blah, dark space, blah blah, never bother us again. Let’s move on with our sheltered, ignorant lives and maybe if we think it away for long enough, the threat will never re-emerge!” Garrus gives a dark chuckle. “Amazing what administration will do to cover up their mistakes. And it’s only going to get worse. Even the turians are reluctant to get involved in a battle the Council claims isn’t real.”

“We’ve been seeking out the geth for the last few months on the Normandy,” Kaidan replies slowly. He doesn’t feel drunk as much as he feels tired, but on some level he’s happy to have someone to give voice to his dormant suspicions. “Taking missions -- orders -- strategically. Trying to hit the areas we think might be targeted. Just for something -- anything, really -- to give to the Council, or if they won’t accept it to prove to ourselves that we should--” He cuts off, wondering if he should say this out loud; but after a moment eyeballing Garrus’ rapt expression, he shrugs, realizing he no longer cares much about the outcome of the whole fucking thing, anyway. “--Whether or not we should go rogue and try to combat the threat our own way.”

Garrus’ expression shifts, hints of sadness and happiness at once evident on his face. “Did you find anything?”

“No,” Kaidan replies. “Not a goddamned thing. Which we kind of expected. We found geth here and there, but that’s not enough. The Council’s stance on geth is that the quarians made them, so--”

“So hardly representative of reaper threat,” Garrus finishes for him. “Just more fodder for the marginalization of the quarians if anything.”

Kaidan waves a hand in a distantly agreeable manner. “Fuck the Council, man,” he says huskily.

“Seconded,” Garrus agrees.

They fall into amicable silence for a while before Kaidan realizes he never answered the question. “Joker knew before the attack hit that it wasn’t the geth, and that’s as far as we got. It might’ve been reapers. I really don’t fucking know, to be honest.”

Garrus nods slowly. “But -- it doesn’t seem like it to you.”

Kaidan hesitates. “No. No. I guess it doesn’t really seem like it to me.”

Garrus rolls what’s left of an ice cube around in the bottom of his glass. “You should trust your instincts.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking aware I fucked it up.”

Garrus turns to look at him, and Kaidan can see him blinking in his periphery. “I didn’t mean it as an attack,” he says calmly, reading the nonsequitur as well as he could. “Did Shepard order you off the ship?”

Kaidan’s lip curls. “Yes.”

“Did you go?”

He nods. “Yes.”

“That’s what she would’ve wanted.”

His fingers curl themselves involuntarily around his glass, and he bows his head. For some reason, put like this, it sounds different. “Didn’t make sense to leave the captain of the ship behind to fetch one stubborn fucking pilot who wanted to go down with his boat. That wasn’t her job.”

“I’m not convinced that’s the relevant factor,” Garrus replies, his own fingers grasping oddly at his glass, too. “Keeping her team safe? That is her job.”

The present tense claws at his ribcage. “Christ, Garrus, don’t talk about her like she’s still here. You don’t believe she made it through again. Not this time.”

“No,” Garrus agrees. “Not this time.” He takes a swig from his empty glass. “Just old habits dying hard.”

They both call out for the bartender at the same time, and sit together in silence another while longer.

“But why can’t we find her?” Garrus asks the room eventually; and Kaidan gives him a sidelong look.

“I don’t know,” he replies sullenly. “Tried to get Anderson to send a fleet out, but he says we don’t have the resources. Much as I hate to admit it, he’s not wrong.” He hits a fist gently, idly against the counter. “You don’t suspect the Alliance of covering that up … or anything.” Suddenly he looks up, turns his head, looks at Garrus with the sort of confidence he wishes he still naturally possessed, now just driven by the thread of a thought.. “Do you?”

Garrus looks at him for just barely too long, and returns very slowly to his drink. “I have absolutely no evidence to suggest any such thing,” he says, at once airy and bitter, “and my frustration with this fucking institution goes way deeper than just Shepard, so it’s hard to tell if I’m inflating my suspicions in other arenas with this incident. Either way, I’m not powerful enough by myself to do anything about it, and I’m not going to be complicit in it, either. I sure as fuck don’t trust anyone within its ranks.” He slams his drink back with a single gesture and slams his glass back on the table, smacking his mouth against the taste. “My father had an expression: you either do things right, or you don’t do them at all. I’m only just figuring out that doing nothing isn’t actually an option.”

“What are you going to do?” Kaidan asks as Garrus fishes awkwardly around for his credit chip.

“Dunno yet, but it’s pretty clear to me that I’m gonna have a much better shot at dealing in justice if I’m unaffiliated.” He frowns, as though realizing for the first time that he’s wearing civvies and not his armour; and something jumps within Kaidan, compels him to find his footing as though to get up.

“Let me come with you,” he says suddenly, moving with ambition in his chair, the feeling foreign to him after the last week. “Fuck the Alliance. Fuck the Council. Fuck the Citadel. I hate this shit. I hate the bureaucracy. I hate sitting here waiting for them to reinstate me just so I can hate them for not finding Shepard and so they can hate me for not saving their flagstaff ship and their Spectre status symbol. I’m done. I’m done too. Let’s go, let’s get out of here. I never want to see this place again.” 

Garrus stops fidgeting in his clothes, stares at Kaidan as though seeing something he’s never witnessed before, and then evaluates him carefully. “I don’t dislike you, Alenko, and I’m telling you this in advance of my next sentence because it’s not gonna be tactful and I want to be clear about the fact that I’m not trying to be unkind. But you’re not the type to stray from the pack, and I can’t afford the liability in loyalty.”

Kaidan bristles in spite of his warning, but Garrus cuts him off before he gets a word out. “I don’t mean that you can’t think for yourself. Obviously you can. But you do best when you’re part of a team, in an organization, led by an action guide. I intend to fly solo for a while, and I don’t know where I’m going to land. You’re a smart tactician and a good fighter, but you have firm ideas, and right now, I don’t. I can’t have you questioning my every move as I figure it out.” Garrus shrugs wildly, limbs made looser by the alcohol. “I don’t know what’s coming next, but I can already tell you it’s not gonna be that.”

Kaidan nods slowly at first, then more affirmingly. “Yeah, okay. I get that.” He stares back into the bar. “I just -- don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Here’s what I would do if I had your assets,” Garrus replies. “I’d go back into the Alliance, full-tilt. I’d pretend to be the golden boy you’ve tried so hard to become, I’d work my way up to as high a status as I can get, I’d use the resources available to me as both a member of the human species and an Alliance Marine, and I’d get to the bottom of everything the Council is trying to cover up using their own shit against them. If I were you, I’d take on as much of Shepard’s mission as I could.” Something cracks in Garrus’ throat, and he turns suddenly to look at his hand as it finally locates his credit chip. “That’s what she would’ve done: carried on within the ranks. So that’s what I would do -- if I were you.” He catches Kaidan’s eye again and shrugs as he swipes the chip. “But I’m not. And it’s not for me. It might be for you.”

Kaidan again nods slowly, then extends his hand. “I’m sorry,” he says, looking Garrus in the eye, voice dropping suddenly into a whisper at the last syllable. “About Shepard.”

Garrus takes his hand and presses his mouth into a thin line. “Me too,” he replies, tone wavering, before turning to go.

  


  


“How was the memorial service?”

Kaidan tries to battle the bile that rises at the question, and realizes he’s going to have to get a lot better at developing a poker face. “As expected,” he gravels. “Dress uniforms. Canned speeches. More condolences than one person can reasonably handle.” He thumbs at his nose and leans back in his chair, arms crossed.

Dr. L’Shara nods. “You seem frustrated.”

He shrugs. “Shepard’s death was heralded as a hero’s death. Her achievements with the Alliance were mentioned, her Spectre status lauded. But nothing about her actual life -- the way she was -- was captured. It just.” He clears his throat. “It seemed like she was her profile, according to the Alliance.” He remembers Garrus laying a hand over the plaque made out in her name in official Alliance letterhead, as though it conveyed a goddamn thing about her. “It was superficial.”

The asari purses her lips; sympathy flashes briefly across her features before neutrality reinstates itself. “I can see how that would be frustrating.”

“But you know. Whatever. Twenty-two people dead. Hard to … do credence to all of them.”

He shifts uncomfortably, and L’Shara’s lip quirks knowingly. “Did you find you felt were blaming any of your crewmates?”

“No.” Just himself. “Not at all.”

This time, she sees through him, and her head cocks to the side with sympathy. “Do you still feel responsible?”

He smoulders, briefly, but then puts in the effort to steady his expression. “I still don’t think I’m supposed to be here. Not over the people who aren’t.” He shrugs. “But I’m gonna do the best I can with the fact that I am.”

She nods thoughtfully. “Do you feel ready to return to active duty?”

It’s an active effort not to grit his teeth. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  


  


_2184_

“Commander!” he hears.

_’Commander!’ he shouts; but Shepard turns, looks over her shoulder, and doesn’t move._

_’Kaidan -- go! Now!’_

It’s a year later, and this time, he turns into the shout rather than away.

“Aye aye,” he mutters, and holds his weapon at the ready. The guilt still wraps itself around his ribs and expands, but his hands are steady as he takes out the nearest geth in defense of his squad. “Room is secure.”


End file.
